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SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Standing in a mall food court, Marcellus Lang slipped a used cellphone into
an ecoATM kiosk. The machine scanned his phone, assessing its condition. It also snapped his photo,
scanned his driver’s license and recorded his electronic fingerprint.

For Lang’s old Evo phone, he was offered $4. For an iPod Touch, he landed a $55 offer.

Within minutes, the machine spit out $59 in cash.

“It’s cool. You dump your old phone for quick cash,” said Lang, a security guard.

For consumers, using an ecoATM is just one of a growing number of options for getting rid of old
digital devices, particularly cellphones.

With the average consumer getting a new smartphone every 18 months, Americans are sitting on an
ever-growing heap of digital discards. And many of those abandoned phones — by some estimates, 800
million in the United States alone —still hold some value, either as recycled donations or cold,
hard cash.

Here’s a look at some of the options for trading, selling or recycling:

Trade up, trade in: Plenty of major retailers, such as Amazon, Best Buy, Target, Radio Shack and
Wal-Mart, will take your old cellphones — and in some cases, computers, tablets, video-game players
and other devices — and give you gift cards toward a store purchase.

“If you have a phone in good condition, this could go toward a substantial dent in the cost.
(The trade-in payments) are worth more than ever before because every store wants to get your
business,” said Jeanette Pavini, consumer-savings expert with Cou-pons.com, based in Mountain View,
Calif.

With so many big-box retailers dangling trade-in incentives, “there’s this great competitive
environment that consumers can take advantage of. I’ve never seen it at this dollar amount, up to
$200 to $300,” Pavini said.

Cash for phones: Companies such as Gazelle.com and USell.com enable consumers to sell their old
electronics from their computer. In most cases, you look up your device, answer questions about its
condition, get a price, then receive a prepaid mail-in envelope for shipping the phone. You’re paid
once they receive the device.

Companies such as Gazelle either recycle the phones for scrap metal or sell them to wholesale
refurbishers, who fix them up for overseas markets.

Donate to a cause: A number of organizations accept used cellphones as donations for various
charitable causes. CellPhonesForSoldiers.com, for example, is an Ohio group that recycles donated
phones and uses the proceeds to supply U.S. soldiers overseas with free international phone-calling
cards. Donors get a tax-donation receipt based on the phone’s value.